“You’re right about that.”
A door closed.
Steps padded softly over a rug around the corner.
“Go,” I ordered under my breath, finally shoving him away. Cold air took his place against the heat of my body, starving me of his warmth. “Before you ruin this entire chance and Thaan makes me start over another night.”
He ducked in to brush his lips against mine one last time. Then grasped the railing of the staircase, vaulting over the edge and dropping out of sight.
“What are you doing?”
Emilius stopped as he turned the corner. I pulled my gaze from the guardrail Pheolix vanished over, willing my chest to stop panting, hoping my cheeks weren’t flushed. “I was waiting for you.”
“I called you.”
“You did?” I reached for him, letting him take my hand and pry me from the wall. “I didn't hear.”
The scent of hot metal climbed the stairs, trailing our feet all the way to the King’s door.
37
Selena
“Thirsty?”
Emilius locked the door behind us, gesturing toward his private liquor cabinet. Bottles lined the back, each one a different size and shape, corked with wood and glass. “Wine?”
I’d already drunk enough that heat whirred through my extremities, painting my cheeks and chest like blooming roses. But Naiads metabolized alcohol faster than humans. On most nights, I could drink and dance all evening, falling into my bed with only a small hint of that weighty float that only came from sharing my secrets with the bottom of a bottle. Even now, the weightlessness was fading.
I nodded, waiting as he poured from his carafe, studying his private rooms. His velvet curtains had been thrown wide, stars splashing across the night sky. A leather chair sat under a tall bookshelf, the side table next to it stacked with tomes that looked as though they’d never been touched. The scent of jasmine hung in the air over an incense burner littered with fresh ash. Antlers had conquered an entire corner, disappearing up into a loft above.
Wide panes of glass comprised the exterior wall, framed at a sharp angle to slant directly under the full moon. I’d always marveled at his chambers. How lovely it might have been to live under such a roof, to watch stars and moon make their journey over your head.
“Don’t be too impressed,” Emilius said, following my line of sight. “All this glass is hot enough to drive you mad come summertime.”
Still hot from the dance and Pheolix’s body pressed against mine, I took his proffered glass with a coy smile, sating myself with a deep pull. It burned quietly down my throat, bubbling in my stomach. I’d have to find a way to make him drink a large amount in a short period of time if I hoped to inebriate him. “Sometimes I think I’m mad, anyway.”
“Mmmm,” he hummed. “Don’t we all.” He watched my finger glide across the glass rim, lifting his glass to his mouth. “How did you come to know Cain, Selena?”
My finger stopped.
I glanced at him. His brown eyes had already flicked to meet mine, the look in his gaze more edged than it had been the moment before.
He threw his glass back, then rapped the wooden surface with a knuckle before reaching for the bottle.
“I met him as a teenager.” I watched as he refilled my flute, unsure about the question.
“At first, I thought Deimos was your lover.” Something about the way he stood, the way he held his glass, the way he watched me now, lust replaced with calculation, set my bones on edge. Usually, I could handle my drinks. I must have had more than I realized. My mind felt fuzzy and soft. Tepid.
“Then I slowly realized Deimos answers to Cain,” Emilius continued, drinking his second glass in a single swig. “And that seemed twice as strange to me because Cain reserved two rooms in the Westward Sea Wing, and rather than share a room with either of two beautiful women he stayed with, he lives with Deimos.”
“You’ve been paying attention,” I said. My words slurred. I blinked at the sound of them melding together, too liquid to be my voice.
The words, too, were wrong. I wouldn’t normally confirm something so easily.
I looked again at the glass in my hand.
“I have,” Emilius replied. “More than I did when he first came. Do you know what I realized? I realized my meetings with Cain and Deimos have no ending. They stop halfway through. One minute I’m speaking to them. The next I’m alone in the room and hours have passed by. Or I wake in my bed, wearing clothes I don’t remember wearing. I wake next to food I don’t remember eating or women I don’t remember bedding.”
